This is great for pulling some of our excellent posts out of the archives and dusting the cobwebs off for new readers. So, here are my 7 links. I hope you enjoy (re-) reading them!
My most beautiful post - A Little Bit Harder: my first trip back to the US with my husband in tow was by far the longests I'd stayed in the States since coming to the Netherlands roughly a year earlier. Coming back was not as easy as I thought.
My most popular post - A Safer Utrecht: this baby has had over 1,000 page views since i posted it in early March of this year. This is a re-publishing of an article I wrote for The Holland Times newspaper on the latest initiative to bust car-theft and automobile break-ins in the city of Utrecht.
My most controversial post - I don't get too controversial on this blog, but by far the post I've gotten the most flak for has been Holland vs the Netherlands. The post came about when a reader complained about the blog title because "Holland is not the name of my country... Holland doesn't exist." Commenters said it was downright wrong to call it Holland, others said it was difficult because many languages don't have a translation for the Netherlands (only Holland), one said we couldn't even refer to it as the Lowlands because that was the name of a festival and not a country, and another received a wedding invitation addressed to him in the Neverlands!
My most helpful post - I like to think of all of my posts as being helpful in some way or another. But based on the emails I get and the keywords most often used to get people to the blog, I'd have to say that my most helpful is I want to take the NT2 exam... now what? There's not much info on this exam in English and most people coming to the Netherlands are required to take it. There are also different tests and different levels and the system is not very organized at all, so there's a lot of confusion and unanswered questions.
A post who's success surprised me - Netherlands = Bad hair days: I wrote this post because I had just had my first salon experience in the Netherlands and had nothing else to write about. It's been in the top 4 all-time favorite posts on the blog since I posted it, gotten 20 comments, is the post that gets me the second most Google search traffic after my most helpful post above, and has actually brought new business to the salon I reviewed in the post. I had no idea getting your hair done in the Netherlands was such a big deal!
A post I feel didn't get the attention it deserved - Everything you never wanted to know about the Dutch toilet: for a post that won me the most popular blog post for the Netherlands on Expatica.com for 2010, it got next to no attention on the blog. When I first moved to the Netherlands, I heard complaints about Dutch toilets more than any other expat complaint. I think it's one of my funniest, quirkiest posts and wish more people had stopped by to read it.
The post I am most proud of - Missing Miep: I wanted to do something to remember and celebrate the life of a wonderful woman. Miep Gies devoted years to working for and protecting the Frank family and is the reason that we have The Diary of Anne Frank. I put a lot of research and care into writing this post and, in the process, learned so much about this remarkable woman. This is another post that did not get the attention I would have liked.
So there you have it. And now, for my 5 nominations...
The rules say that any kind of blog can be nominated to take part, but I feel that, since this is an expat blog, I should nominate other excellent expat blogs. And they are:
A Letter from the Netherlands
Cloggie Central
Maastricht Minutiae
Drie Culturen
Back Home
Please stop by and visit these other blogs as they really are excellent reads, and be on the lookout for their own 7 links!
What are some of your favorite Clogs and Tulips posts?
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